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Brilliant, eccentric, determined — and he’s only 4!

Sammy is what you would call a personality, a “character” — like Hollywood before the Hays code or Elvis before the army.

Sammy, 4, and his favourite kitty. The little guy dreams of being both an astronaut and a chef.

By Joel RubinoffWaterloo Region Record

Mon., July 28, 2014

So now he’s 4.

I’m not sure how it happened, because it seems like just yesterday he was in his crib, leaking poop out his diaper, grinning from ear to ear.

Even then he had a mischievous glint that said, “I know you don’t really know what you’re doing, buster, so watch out.”

And now? He’s what you would call a personality, a “character” — like Hollywood before the Hays code, Elvis before the army, Samson before Delilah.

Let’s face it: he’s a menace. But during this last gulp of freedom before junior kindergarten regulates the rebellion out of his DNA — well, at least until adolescence — it occurs to me he’s also the most “Sammy” he’ll ever be.

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“I’m afraid to go to heaven because there will be dinosaurs up there who will eat me!” he confides in one of his more reflective moments.

“No, no,” I say, unused to theological discussions before my morning coffee. “They’ll be in dinosaur heaven. You have nothing to worry about.”

He relaxes visibly and runs off to play.

Another crisis averted.

But for a kid who spends his days chasing after me with a strip of bacon — “Dammit, Sammy, I keep telling you: you’re half Jewish!” — and stuffing the cat in a cardboard spaceship with a week’s supply of Meow Mix, this is the tip of the iceberg.

“You have to go to your gymnastics class!” he growls in what I gather, from his makeshift baritone, is a less than flattering impression of, ahem, me.

“But I don’t wanna go,” I respond in a tiny kid voice, curious where this will lead. “I wanna stay home with my Mommy!”

“You have to go!” he bellows, scowl plastered on his face. “You’ll have a good time! It’s good exercise!”

That does sound like me, I have to admit. And he’s somehow worked my indignation, outrage and grumpy intolerance into it as well.

I have to admit, I have a soft spot for this kid, and not just because he reminds me of me.

He’s eccentric, determined, and despite his insistence on sniffing my arm to ensure I haven’t been replaced by an alien robot (“I always know your smell”), there’s a freewheeling zest for life that can’t be denied.

“I’m going to open my own restaurant!” he tells me with absolute certainty. “And then I’m going to be an astronaut!”

If I flash-forward 30 years, I can see him in a chef’s hat, circling Pluto with a moon rock in one hand, a spatula in the other.

“You know,” I tell him with an affectionate pat, “when you’re a grown up, I’m going to miss the 4-year-old you.”

He stares at me, flummoxed. “Will you still be alive when I’m a grown up?”

“Jeez, I hope so.”

He places a tiny hand on my shoulder. “Eat healthy foods and exercise!”

Fearless, demanding, unintentionally hilarious. If he plays his cards right, he could grow up to be the next Donald Trump.

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